Scaling Ethanol Extraction

Heptane, multiple FFE’s, next season we will go membrane, need to get our $ out of the machines were using now 1st

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Epic! Whos membrane will you buy or build it yourself?

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If buying today … I would probly go x-spiral

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Haha even MC liked that post. :rofl:

:+1:

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I’m trying to get better at it lol. I have 6x as many now as when someone first brought that up. Still not a ton i know.

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Does the x-spiral require a chiller or do you recommend one?

The electric units do. They have a heat exchanger you plug a chiller into. For the three sizes the loads are, 1 kw, 3.5 kw, 7 ke respectively.

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Reproofing not necessary with methanol, right?

We have in the past but found we didnt really need too

Edit: if ya keep it dry

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why would that be?

I can see it being easier, and not having to actively worry if you’ve achieved it, but not picking up water?!?

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extract bio with hept, filter, recover, dissolve in MeOH, freeze, filter, recover & repeat.

very little concentrations of water make contact with my MeOH

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@MagisterChemist do your membranes do hept/hex/tane/pane/etc… or just etoh?

Well there’s no such thing as “my” membranes per se – i offer membranes from all vendors on the market, including ones that are well suited for hydrocarbons.

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Yes fair point, but you knew where I was headed with my questioning :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Can you explain this comment…you manufacture your own membrane and work with other membrane manus?

I don’t manufacture any membranes. I manufacture systems for running the membranes. The membrane elements themselves come from industrial membrane manufacturers, and i source them from different companies depending on the job at hand.

This also applies to all the other membrane system vendors. We all design different systems but we all source the membranes from the same pool of suppliers. So there’s no such thing as “my membranes” or “their membranes” in this space. Only “my system” or “their system”, both of which could have any vendor’s membrane elements inserted into them.

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Why not use methanol over etho for initial extraction. No reproofing necessary…

@cyclopath i read meoh doesn’t form azeotrope like etho…

Do i know the definition of azeotrope… Nope! :rofl:

Hes using methanol for winterization not extraction. You use methanol because it doesnt require the cold temps ethanol does and pulls the fats and waxes far better.

He talks about keeping his methanol fee of water but if he added some water he would find that it does even better at coagulating those fats and waxes with some water in it vs 100%meoh.

azeotrope means that once two solvents mix, they work togteher and frm a bond that wont easily break separate.

definition:a mixture of two liquids which has a constant boiling point and composition throughout distillation.

ethanol forms one with water so you cannot reproof like you can with methanol which doesnt form an azeotrope.

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Thanks! Very helpful

Op was talking about extracting at scale with etho… I was asking why not use cryo meoh for the extraction over etho so you don’t have to deal with reproofing later… Isn’t that the big downside to etho?

Ive heard of ones using water to help crash the fats. When you do this how is the water then sperated from meoh? … i have been just spraying my aa layer with a sprits of water.

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The OP has actually switched to heptane for their extraction solution and are using methanol for winterization.

Methanol and water are miscible but have a decent difference in boiling points so its much easier to reproof and get back to a higher purity. When you recover the methanol and water the methanol comes first with some of the water codistilling (in most cases) and then you are left with almost no methanol and most of the water is left then you need to increase temps and remove the remaining water.

ethanol azetrope info from wikipedia:
Each azeotrope has a characteristic boiling point. … A well-known example of a positive azeotrope is 95.63% ethanol and 4.37% water (by mass), which boils at 78.2 °C. Ethanol boils at 78.4 °C, water boils at 100 °C, but the azeotrope boils at 78.2 °C, which is lower than either of its constituents.

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